17 June, 2017

I think all book bloggers at some point had a discussion with themselves whether they should follow current trends and hypes of book community. I am no exception. To be completely honest I am not as much involved in community as I used to be so I only catch the biggest things right now. But that is mainly because before I have seen horrible things happening in this generally lovely community and that kinda makes me want to distance yourself a little bit. Whether it is a good idea or not is a discussion for another time, but today I want to talk if you should follow current trends and hypes as a blogger.

• TRENDS MAKE YOUR BLOG POPULAR

Now partly it is true, trends tend to attract more traffic to your blog so if you are all about statistics this might be a way for you :D But if talking serious, I think there are good and bad trends so in the end it is really up to you what you post and what not. Being popular is not a bad thing as long as you are doing it because you believe in it. However, I would strongly discourage to say a strong no to the trends. Some of trends can actually teach you many new things!

• HYPED BOOKS KEEP YOU ON TOP

This has been a center of heated discussion all around book community for a long time. Should we or should we not concentrate on reviewing hyped books? The answer is simple maybe. Some hyped books turned out to be overhyped and not worth your time. But some are actually really good. What I do personally is find that balance in between, I read books that I had on my TBR for a long time but I do also scan hyped books lists and pick what interest me. What is a no no is just reading hyped books for popularity. You will have no fun doing that and reading will become a job.

• FINE BALANCE IS A MUST

So previously I told you that either you choose to follow trends or not it is fine both ways. However, what you should not do is take it too far. If you are part of book twitter community I bet you have seen how far some people tend to take stuff. Please remember that if somebody did something wrong and now people are against it, everybody makes mistakes. Or if you want to make people aware of things, do it ALWAYS in a friendly manner. Nobody wants to be told they read shitty books because they only read YA. This is just not acceptable. So be always nice!

• OVERHYPED PAID BOOKS
If you are keeping up with booktube and goodreads you might have seen the recent conflict going on about paid promotions. This is where our overhyped books come. I am not saying promoting books for money is bad, most booktubers have actually a disclaimer in their videos that promotions are paid when they do it. However, the question sometimes is asked if you as a free reviewer should still promote overhyped books? Well...from my personal opinion, if you loved the book just go ahead! It does not matter if it is overhyped, as long as you loved it you are more than welcome to share your love for it too, just because it is overhyped for some does not necessary mean nobody can love it!